by Mark Zubro
“No problem,” Sry said.
Mike looked at the boy’s covered form. “Did he come across the guy setting the charge? Did the one he had sex with leave him alive? Did he have sex with the saboteur? Did the saboteur leave him down here for a reason? Was Krim the saboteur?” He sighed. “I’m going to have to talk to Krim.” Mike shook his head. “We have to move Bir.”
“Where to?” Brux asked.
“How about his room?” Mike suggested. “We have no other facilities for this kind of thing.”
“Good a place as any,” Gek said.
“I’ll carry him myself,” Mike said.
“That’s not necessary,” Gek said.
“I want to. He wasn’t very big. I bet he didn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds.” Without another word he bent to lift Bir. He cradled the lifeless form. He expected to feel revulsion or fear from touching the dead boy.
Instead he felt great sadness and tenderness. He straightened up.
“You sure you don’t want help?” Joe asked.
Mike shook his head. “No, I’m fine.”
Without speaking, they moved back toward the inhabited sections. Mike walked along the last half mile to the boy’s room. He moved slower than if he was a pallbearer carrying a casket at a funeral.
Mike entered Bir’s cubicle. With all the care he could muster, he placed him down and arranged the body. Done, he looked down at it. His eyes misted at the memory of a friend dead, a life lost. He bowed his head. The silence of the galaxy seeped into the room. He shivered. There was nothing more he could do here.
CHAPTER THIRTY
In the hall after leaving Gek in Bir’s room with the body for the examination, Mike, Joe, and Brux talked.
Brux asked, “What if they shut us down because of this?”
“I can’t imagine they’ll care. I told Cak I’d report it. I didn’t say when.”
Joe said, “If there are spies, maybe they’ll report it.”
Mike sighed. “They probably will.”
Brux put out a reassuring hand. He murmured, “Thank you for what you’re trying to do.”
“Thanks.”
“And I’ll redouble my efforts to make sure no communications get off the planet unless they’ve gone through me. I thought I had that controlled. I will triple check everything.” He swept off.
In their room Mike and Joe held each other and comforted each other.
Joe leaned back slightly from the embrace and looked in Mike’s eyes. “If I was a throw-things-uselessly or run-around-with-my-hair-on-fire kind of guy, this would be that moment.”
Mike sighed. “I’m exhausted emotionally. This is why I never wanted to be in charge of things. Even without that, Bir’s death hits hard.”
Joe had been a police officer when he arrived on Earth. He’d had implants that helped him look into people’s minds. Mike trusted Joe’s cop instincts and expertise even without Joe having the implants.
“We gotta talk to Krim,” Mike said.
Joe agreed.
They sent a message to Krim’s communicator. In seconds they got a message back that he’d arrive in their room in five minutes.
Mike and Joe spent the time calling up Bir’s file. The boy had been a “shaflette.” Abortion had long been outlawed in the Religionists sections of this end of the galaxy. It was one of the main planks in the Religionists’ platform. The vast pool of unwanted babies created by the law, and its stringent enforcement, were called shaflettes, or at least that’s what Mike translated the word as. The care, feeding, and housing of these kids had eventually fallen to the central government, which with spectacular indifference had created kid ghettos that were breeding grounds for some of the most drug and violence-prone people in Hrrrm. Bir had come out of that environment a mess of brashness and timidity. He also had an annoying habit of picking at his acne in public, which Mike had often seen him do. While on the prison ship and continuing in the colony Bir and Krim and been friends.
Krim walked in. He’d obviously been crying. He wiped his tears and snot on his tunic. Joe handed him a piece of cloth.
Mike said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks,” Krim said.
“You were one of the people closest to him here, right?” Joe asked. Mike bowed to Joe’s expertise as a cop.
“Oh, yes, and from before,” Krim said.
“You mean the camps?”
“Yes, but before that too.” His eyes filled up with tears. “He was my best friend.”
“I know it’s hard to talk about someone you knew,” Joe said. “But please try. Anything you can tell us might be helpful.”
Krim wiped his nose, then began. “We met years ago. It was after I ran away from the orphan city. For a while I sort of drifted from planet to planet. You know how most of us shaflettes do.”
Joe nodded.
Krim continued, “So I found myself late one night, I should say early one morning, the bitter cold of northern Odwablan. You’ve heard how cold that is?”
Joe nodded. Mike shook his head.
“It’s really cold. Supposed to be the coldest inhabited planet. It was winter. I’d been abandoned there by an interplanetary barge pilot, who hadn’t even paid me. He shoved me out of the spaceship just before he took off. So I hustled. I’d been hustling all night for money to be able to afford to get out of the awful place or at least to find someplace warm to sleep. Bir and I were working the same bar. A john couldn’t decide which of us he wanted. He was the only paying customer in a hundred miles so we stuck it out. It was one hundred below zero out. Eventually Bir got mad. He told the guy to fuck off and get lost. We went to a rundown motel room Bir had rented. At least it was out of the cold. We fooled around a little that night. We spent the next couple months getting the money to leave. We got to know each other, became friends, decided to hang around together for a while, which turned into a couple of years.”
“How old were you guys when you started all this?” Mike asked.
“I was eleven. Bir was twelve.”
“Eleven.” Mike couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.
“I started hustling when I was nine.” Krim made the explanation sound like a boast.
“Oh.” Was all Mike could think of to say.
“We took care of each other. We were never lovers or anything. Oh, occasionally we’d do each other, but it was more a friendship thing.”
Joe asked, “No problems between you two?”
Krim looked slightly resentful. An unattractive whine slipped into his tone. “No, who said there was?”
“No one,” Joe said. “I was simply checking. How’d you guys manage to get sent here together?”
Krim gave a short bark of a laugh. “Bir sucked off the Religionist in charge of our sector. Hypocrite. Bir said his cum was the worst tasting he ever had, but it got us a placement together. Bir always knew smart, clever things to do. He was my only friend here. He’s dead and I’m alone again.” Krim began to sniffle. He dabbed at his nose.
They let the kid pull himself together. Mike wondered if Krim’s version of the friendship, especially the relative degree of closeness would have coincided with Bir’s.
When he had regained a semblance of control Krim said, “I’m worried.”
“What about?”
“What if someone is trying to kill me too.”
Joe asked, “Why would they want to do that?”
For an answer Krim started to cry again.
They waited.
Finally Krim whispered, “What if they’re trying to kill hustlers?”
Joe spoke in soothing tones. “I think you’re perfectly safe. No one here has any reason for killing hustlers because they’re hustlers.”
“They killed Bir.”
“But we don’t know why yet. I don’t think you have any reason to worry. I need your help in finding out the real reason. Can you do that?”
Krim gave him a doubtful look.
Joe continu
ed, “One thing I need to know is if he had any problems here that you know about. Any fights with people, anything you can think of.”
“No,” Krim said. “He liked everybody. Everybody liked him.”
“He didn’t have any special relationships with anyone?”
“Not that I knew about, and I would have known. He told me everything, especially important things.”
“Like what important things?”
“Well.” Krim hesitated.
Joe prodded. “We need to know all we can.”
Krim drew a deep breath. “He was hustling here.”
Mike looked startled. “He was?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I’m just surprised is all.”
“Believe it.” A boastful whine crept into Krim’s voice. “There was hustling going on in the collection centers. Even during the trip here, and here in the colony. If you don’t believe me, ask Brux. He knows all about it.”
“I will.” Mike was irritated that Brux hadn’t told him. He asked, “Are you hustling here?”
“Yes.” There was no boast in the response.
Mike was curious. “How do they pay you? There’s no currency here.”
“Usually in energy time. We get their allotments. Sometimes I have hot running water all day.”
This was an unheard of luxury.
“But not often,” Krim hastened to add when he saw the look on Mike’s face. “It really doesn’t happen very often.”
Mike felt like a prudish old maid schoolteacher. He wasn’t sure if the oldest profession managing to survive collection, the camps, and prison exile was a good thing or not. He didn’t disagree with hustling as a way to make a living. He just hadn’t thought about whether or not it would be part of life here. He thought to himself, why should I be surprised?
Joe asked, “Did he have any regular customers? Someone who might get jealous or possessive? Even someone who was prone to violence or kinky sex? Any small thing you can remember that would point to something out of the ordinary.”
“I do most of the kinky stuff, Bir didn’t. He was pretty staid when it came to sex. Oh, he’d do pretty much what his tricks wanted, but for example, Bir preferred to be a top. He charged huge amounts if a customer wanted a shot at his ass.” Krim thought for a minute. “I do remember something. He was walking a little gingerly the other morning. I teased him about it. I presumed he’d had a major fucking the night before. He didn’t say much, and I can’t remember exactly what he said, but I got the impression that he’d bottomed for this guy more than once. Bir seemed tense when I asked him about it so I let it drop. I knew he’d tell me about it eventually. He always did.” The kid got teary-eyed again. “Now he’ll never tell me anything.”
Joe said, “We’ll all miss him.”
“Yeah, he was my best friend ever.” Krim wiped his eyes.
Joe waited for Krim to calm down again then asked, “He didn’t give you any clue about who it might be?”
Krim shook his head, “Not that I can think of.”
“Please keep trying to remember.”
Krim said, “I’ll do my best.”
Joe pulled out the spangled cloth they’d found with Krim’s body. Joe asked, “You recognize this?”
Krim turned pale. “I gave it to Bir the first night on the planet. We used it to clean up after we were done having sex. I told him he could keep it as a souvenir.”
“And you haven’t seen it since that night?”
“No. Why? Is it important?”
Joe said, “It was found with his body.”
Both men watched Krim’s reaction. Mike thought he looked confused and upset.
“You think because he had that I killed him?” Krim’s voice rose to near hysteria on the last words.
“No,” Joe said, “it’s just something I need to ask about.”
“Well, I haven’t seen it since that night.”
Joe said, “If you can remember anything else, please let us know.”
Krim stood up. “If I think of something, I’ll let you know.” The boy hesitated at the door. In a timid voice that was down to a quiver he asked, “You’re not mad at me for hustling here?”
“No,” Mike said. “Just be careful is all I’d say.”
Krim gave him a grateful look. Then his face turned somber. “Bir really liked you a lot, you know. He always talked about you. I wish you could like me like you liked him.”
Mike felt embarrassed for the boy begging for affection. “You’re a good person.”
Krim’s voice was a whisper. “Would you hold me?”
Mike moved to the boy and took him in his arms. Krim’s head barely came to Mike’s chin. He patted the boy’s back, felt the frail body quiver.
The boy broke the embrace. He stopped in the entrance. “Someday I’d like to have what you and Joe have.”
Mike said, “I hope you have it soon.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
After the boy left Joe and Mike looked at each other. Mike felt little but weariness.
“Do we believe him about the cloth?” Mike asked.
Joe shrugged, “When I had my implants, I’d know who did it already.” Joe’s police implant had allowed him to read a person’s memory so a criminal was easily caught. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
Sry knocked on the portal. He crossed the threshold and said, “I have information for you on Bir’s death.”
Mike rubbed his hand over his face. He was tired, but this needed to be done. “What did you come up with?”
“I traced his movements tonight, last night now, up to a half an hour before we found him.”
“Great.”
“He spent the early part of the evening with Cak.”
“Cak?”
“After he had dinner, and before the meeting, about seven, Bir went back to Cak’s room.”
Mike raised in inquisitive eyebrow.
“Cak says the kid often came to his room. Says the kid claimed to like the atmosphere. He said the kid seemed restless. Cak remembers him saying he had an appointment, that he was working too hard these days, keeping such late hours.”
“We’ve all been working too hard.”
“Right. So then Cak left to go a meeting. Bir stayed for how long we can’t tell. He definitely left before 8:15 because we have him logging into the tridimensional porn room at that time.”
The tridimensional porn room was one of the first things the men built as part of their recreation time.
Again Joe took up the questioning. He said, “If no one saw him, maybe he stayed in Cak’s room until then.”
“Possible, but we have no way to tell. He spent the bulk of the evening in the tridimensional video room watching porn tapes.”
“Participating?”
“The computer record says he only watched. You know, by the way, that porn participation program hasn’t turned out be very popular. They look pretty grainy and seedy.”
Joe asked, “Was anyone with him?”
“The computer says not.”
“If he was having a sexual tryst later, why was he watching porn tapes early in the evening?”
“I don’t know.”
“It seems like an odd activity for someone who was having sex later.”
“What’d he do after that?”
“No one claims to have seen him after he left the viewing room, which the computer log says was a minute after 10:00.”
Joe asked, “No one saw him in the halls or anything?”
Sry said, “Nope. Or if they did, they don’t remember or aren’t saying.”
“Okay. Then what?”
Sry said, “Then it seems he went to see Karsh.”
Mike swore.
“My sentiments exactly. Karsh was not forthcoming with information. He resented my questions. I think my very presence irritated him. He was quite vocal about disliking my questions and you, Mike.”
Joe asked, “You mean he likes me?”
/> Sry gave a brief smile. “Sorry, he didn’t mention you.”
Mike said, “Spare me the gory details on his likes and dislikes.”
“He has likes?” Joe asked.
Mike smiled. “So what he did he say about Bir?”
“He claims they talked for a few minutes, and then the kid left.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s what he said. I only found out about it by accident. The guy who takes care of the computer room said he thought Karsh was one of Bir’s friends.”
Mike said, “Karsh is a shit-for-brains. He was the last one to see him alive? I’m going to have to talk to him tonight. Why would Bir talk to him? Bir hated him. Did you ever hear the imitations Bir did of both of Karsh and Cak?”
“Yeah. They were terrific. He even had that odd scowl Cak has down to a T.”
Mike was mystified. Could Bir have told Cak or Karsh about the perfillian wood, and then either of them took matters into their own hands in some bizarre way? He hoped that wasn’t the solution. Karsh or Cak knowing about the wood would be annoying but not necessarily bad. Either of them as a murderer would be far worse. If it came to accusing them, it might look like Mike was acting vindictively against his most vocal opponents. Well, it hadn’t come to that yet. Why couldn’t this involve someone besides them?
Sry nodded. “So that was it. No one saw him after Karsh did. That was about 10:30.”
Joe asked, “And he was dead at 11:00?”
“Yep.”
“Keep checking around. We’ve got to see if we can find where he was for those unaccounted-for times. I’ll talk to Karsh and Cak myself. Did you find out if there were any other people he was particularly close to?”
Sry pointed at Mike. “You, for one.”
“I think I knew that,” Mike said.
“Sorry. There was one other, Rix. He was next closest in age to Krim and Bir in the colony. He didn’t admit to seeing Bir tonight.”
“We’ll have to talk to him too.” He glanced at the time. It was closing in on the middle of the night. “Thank you for taking care of this. Saved me a hell of a lot of running around.”